Wednesday, March 17, 2010

NCTIES 2010 - eInstruction's New CPS Software Upgrade

eInstruction has come out with new a version of thier software for the CPS. Several things are great about this upgrade. First and foremost is the fact that from these versions on you will be able to upgrade the software instead of having to remove previous versions before installing the new. The other huge feature of CPS 6.51.0002 is that this one version can run all generations of their remotes. This includes the 1st generation IR clickers (the blue remotes with the white buttons and the white remotes with the blue buttons), the 2nd generation RF clickers (they have the display screen but no texting capabilities) and the Pulse RF (texting capability) clickers. What's even better is that you can run multiple USB devices at the same time. I tested it out by running a set of IR clickers with the 2nd generation RF clickers and they worked flawlessly together. I was able to answer questions using both sets of remotes at the same time. Then I tested the IR with the Pulse and they worked flawlessly together. You can also run all three sets together. This is news that I had been waiting to hear from eInstruction for some time.

Here is a list of the new features in this version of CPS:
•vClicker™ Mobile Edition integration
•eI Community integration
•Cornerstone Education Suite integration
•CPS™ Pulse compatibility
•Centralized receiver settings to Device Manager
•Allow use of multiple USB receivers
•Teachers will now be able to see numeric and verbal responses on the Mobi KWIK screen.
•New additions to the Engage Bar for verbal questions, enhanced button placement for ease of use.
•Change some reports to allow new selectable sort fields, and single report per page output.
•New question types available in regrade screen
•Added new question type Multiple Choice question/answer option up to letter J (MC9 and MC10).
•Added new question type Multiple Choice Multiple Correct (MC2 – MC10)
•Now allows for the creation of a Short Answer type that can be engaged in all teaching modes, allowing up to 20 characters
•Added Short Answer question types that are now visible to teachers in all scoring and gradebook views.
•Added Answer Series question type that allows the ordering or sequencing of 2 - 10 answers from the CPS question author tool (AS2 – AS10).
•Engage Answer Series question types in Standard Mode, Teacher Led Mode, Student Paced Mode, and Student Practice Mode
•Add ability to view data for new questions types in reports
•Add new question types to import/export for lessons or database, as well as in all reports.
•Addition ExamView option for using Multiple Response questions
•Added an option for the Teacher to choose to automatically Power-off RF Response Pads (Clickers) joined to that Channel upon program exit to and within range.
•Added Homework mode support for Pulse clickers
•New "Essay" question type supports text entries of up to 140 characters when using a Pulse receiver and Pulse clickers
•Compatible with both Windows 7 and 64 bit processors

4 comments:

Just a data point, but I when I upgraded to the latest version of the CPS software things did not work out well when I engaged the student-paced mode of testing. I repeatedly had the system freeze up. I duplicated this on a second computer system and then uninstalled/reinstalled all CPS software just to be sure. Same thing. I had to go back to the 5.4 version legacy software to get student-paced mode back. This happened with the more modern IR clickers (white case) but I don't think that should factor in to it.